Will
by uzumaki rakku
Summary: [Post-Pain divergence] Katsuyu had been silent since they left the false tree where Nagato and Konan had concealed themselves, preoccupied with passing information to her divisions and telling him nothing. There was nothing to do but to continue walking… and while he dared not believe, he hoped that he would finally meet with someone when he was nearing the village. But—
1. Will I see you, or will I lose you again

Chapter 1: Will I see you, or will I lose you again?

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Is Kakashi-sensei away on a mission outside the village?

...

...I see…

.

Pain was dead. Nagato was dead.

It was a strange feeling, to go from hating one's enemy to sympathizing with them, all in the span of a few hours. So many things had happened in that time, and so much had changed…

He had been confused and even doubtful at first when Nagato sought redemption in sacrifice. He still dared not believe what had happened, despite what Katsuyu had told him - he needed to see it for himself, to see (him) everyone alive again.

There was something Nagato had said which made him uneasy.

The man had paused, briefly, just as he was about to end his resurrection jutsu, and then raised his head to look at Naruto with eyes full of deep sadness and regret.

"I'm sorry," Nagato had said to him. "I tried."

He'd felt a strange numbness in the tips of his fingers at those words, even though he had not known what they'd meant.

The forest was strangely quiet as he slowly made his way back. His feet were like lead and dragged in the ground as he walked, pausing every few steps to brace himself against a tree. He wondered if the village would be just as silent, like it had been when he had arrived upon the scene of disaster.

Sage Mode would give him the answer to all his questions. He knew he had not the chakra for it, and yet he had to try...

Naruto closed his eyes for only a moment, but he was already falling.

The impact of hitting the ground sent a jolt of pain through his entire body. He let himself lie there for minutes that felt like eternities, squeezing his eyes shut to hold back the hot, angry tears that threatened to spill forth.

He had hoped someone would come.

The numbness was spreading. He could feel it in his limbs as he pushed himself up inch by inch, holding on to the tree trunk with a grip so tight his fingernails dug into the bark.

There was blood on his mouth. A split lip, from when he had smashed his face into the ground. He ignored it and continued walking.

He wished someone would find him, for the wait was unbearable. Katsuyu had been silent since they left the false tree where Nagato and Konan had concealed themselves, preoccupied with passing information to her divisions and telling him nothing. There was nothing to do but to continue walking… and while he dared not believe, he hoped that he would finally meet with someone when he was nearing the village.

But nobody came.

.

The noise of the joyful village was almost deafening after the silence of the forest. The villagers cheered upon his arrival, rushing forward to thank him and welcome him back. His heartbeat quickened.

If they're all alive, then…

"I told them everything that happened," Katsuyu said quietly.

He was saved from being overwhelmed by the crowd when Sakura made her way through. He stepped forward to greet her, but the words died upon his lips when he saw her stricken expression.

She had been crying.

He felt suddenly very cold. The numbness was spreading again, creeping up his arms into his neck, his chest, and settling into a peculiar feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Sakura-chan," he began hoarsely, voice cracking as he forced the words out. "Where's Kakashi-sensei?"

.

He did not cry until he saw the body.

.

Kakashi had been dug out of the rubble by someone and laid on the ground. He was still there when Naruto found him, after a frantic search through the village.

Naruto fell to his knees beside the body of his former teacher.

It could not be true.

"Hey, sensei…" He reached a shaking hand towards the bloodstained silver hair, gingerly brushing it to the side. "You're hurt."

Kakashi's eyes remained closed.

"Did you push yourself too hard again? You must have… you've been bleeding. I've never seen you in such a state."

Trembling fingers ghosted over the familiar scar, over the mask which even now concealed half of Kakashi's face, and came to rest at the side of his neck.

"Aren't you supposed to call me to help when you're in trouble? I would've come… I would've helped you."

No pulse.

"This is some kind of illusion, right…? You must've came back. Everyone else did. This can't be true."

He pulled open Kakashi's flak jacket and pressed his hand, and then his ear, against the man's chest.

"This can't… I can't…"

No heartbeat.

Naruto pulled on all the nature energy he could gather and felt the chakra presence of every last person in the village, except…

An empty void next to him, where Kakashi's chakra should've been. Where Kakashi should've been.

Naruto gave a choked sob.

"I can't lose you again."

But he already had.

* * *

 **will**

 _modal verb_

1\. Expressing the future tense.

1.1. Expressing a strong intention or assertion about the future.

\- Oxford English Dictionary

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 **Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad fic idea. Chapter 2 is currently undergoing edits.** **Working title: _Will you never return?_**

 **Quick poll: how many of you would be interested if I made a Twitter and/or Tumblr account specifically for updates on fic progress (and sometimes sneak previews of my drafts)? You can append your preferences (would you be interested, would you prefer Twitter or Tumblr or some other platform) to your review if you'd like to leave one. :)  
**


	2. Will you never return?

Chapter 2: Will you never return?

* * *

He dreamt of falling, of watching as someone else fell, and of being too far away to catch him.

.

Naruto awoke in a hospital bed.

"Hey," Sakura said quietly, seated in a chair next to the bed. "You passed out. We were worried, so we brought you here and did a check-up. Your injuries are mostly healed, so it's mainly exhaustion that's put you out for so long."

"Oh," Naruto said vaguely, then the haze of fatigue cleared and he sat bolt upright. "Where's – "

"Downstairs." Sakura's face was pale, but her eyes were steady when they met his. "We moved him to the morgue."

He stumbled out of bed and towards the door, Sakura following in silence.

* * *

 _A lot of things can be learned by studying a corpse. A shinobi's dead body can hold many of his village's secrets._

* * *

Naruto pulled his jacket closer around himself as they entered the morgue. He realised that he had never been there before, but Sakura was clearly no stranger to the place. She flipped a switch on the wall and the fluorescent lights sprang to life, revealing that the morgue had been empty before they entered.

Naruto flinched at the harsh lighting, and at yet another reminder that Kakashi alone had not returned from death that day.

Sakura lead him to another chamber at the back, where Kakashi's… where Kakashi was. He watched as she went through the security seals carved into the door, before opening it to reveal a smaller room with only one body inside, laid out on a table and covered by a white sheet.

Naruto walked up and lifted the sheet, revealing the familiar masked face.

"Shizune-senpai took care of everything earlier," Sakura whispered. "I… I couldn't."

Underneath the cold bluish light, with the blood and grime of battle cleaned away, Kakashi looked paler than ever. Naruto had always thought, privately, that Kakashi's fair skin and silver hair gave him a look that was striking, almost otherworldly.

Seeing him like this made Naruto almost want to laugh at the reminder.

After all, Kakashi didn't live in his world anymore, did he?

He pulled the sheet down further and slowly placed his hand over Kakashi's, covering those pale, slim fingers with his own.

"He's cold," Naruto said blankly, only just realising that he had been shivering from the moment they entered the room.

"The village's standard procedure for deceased ninja with bloodline limits is to store them at very low temperatures to prevent decomposition," Sakura told him in a quiet, mechanical voice. "Especially if the bloodline is one that might be transplanted."

Naruto held the cold, dead hand and stared down at the masked face through a haze of tears.

"Why didn't he come back?" he said, so softly that Sakura could barely hear him. "Nagato's jutsu was supposed to revive everybody. Where did it go wrong?"

"I have... a theory," Sakura said, hesitant, and when he turned to look at her he saw her eyes fill with tears.

"When people are killed suddenly, their chakra doesn't vanish all at once," she told him, her voice distant and listless. "Some of it lingers in the body for a while, and… I think that's what was needed for Pain's resurrection jutsu to work. He used the residue chakra to form a kind of link, something that would tie their souls back to their bodies, while also healing mortal injuries so the revived person wouldn't immediately die again."

The numbness was back. "But that's not what happened with K- Kakashi-sensei," he said, hating himself for how he stumbled over the name.

Sakura shook her head. She, too, was trembling. "I saw the report," she said, the sound of her words growing fainter and fainter. "The cause of death was the complete exhaustion of chakra, so much that even his life-force had been completely drained."

She buried her face in her hands, shaking with the force of suppressed sobs.

"There was nothing left."

The numbness had taken over his brain. There was a strange noise in his head, an endless cacophony of words and names clashing and crashing together until all he could hear was screaming.

"Five seconds," he said.

Sakura stared at him.

"That intel, about Pain's gravity powers. It was from Kakashi-sensei, wasn't it?" His grip unconsciously tightened around Kakashi's hand.

Something she saw in his face alarmed her. "I'm not sure – "

"It has to be," he said firmly. "Nobody else could've figured out the exact recovery time for Pain's abilities, _and_ ensured that the information was passed on. It must've been him… he must've died to protect that intel."

He grit his teeth.

"Why wasn't I there? Why didn't I know of _anything_ when the village was attacked? If I'd known earlier, then maybe none of this would have happened, and maybe he'd still – he'd still be – "

Unable to continue, he sank onto his knees and pressed his forehead against Kakashi's wrist. Sakura placed a hand on his shoulder, and they stayed that way as their tears fell into the cold, dead silence.

.

Eventually Sakura spoke. "Naruto… you said that you hadn't known anything about the village being attacked. But wasn't there a messenger toad left in Konoha, who was supposed to inform Myoubokuzan of emergencies?"

Naruto jolted upwards at the reminder. "Yes – I think – " he blinked distractedly, before gathering his thoughts. "I think it was Kousuke. Gamatama noticed his name missing from the contract list and guessed that something was wrong. I don't know if he's alive – hold on, I'll summon him." He made a quick bite on the side of his thumb and placed it on the floor, skipping the hand-seals as his familiarity with the jutsu had made them obsolete long ago.

When the smoke cleared the small messenger toad was there, but so was another animal which left Naruto and Sakura dumbstruck.

"Pakkun!"

"Hey, what's going – " the pug looked up and stopped mid-sentence, letting out a shrill whine. He looked at Naruto and Sakura wildly, whimpered, and un-summoned himself in a puff of smoke.

"He's gone to tell the others," Naruto said, horrified. "They didn't know."

"Oh no…" Sakura was just as stricken as he was. "To find out like this – "

"Um," Kousuke piped up weakly, bewildered by the turn of events. "What just happened? I thought you only held the Toad contract."

The little toad's eyes widened. "Oh!" he exclaimed, before Naruto could say anything in reply. "I needed to tell you – the village was under attack, and I was supposed to go inform the others, but then something stabbed me and… that's all I remember."

"Do you know who did it?" Naruto asked urgently, but Kousuke shook his head.

"I didn't see anything before I was attacked… all I know is that I was stabbed with some kind of blade. And then I woke up with no idea what had happened, so I went back to Myoubokuzan to tell Fukasaku-sama."

"I'm glad you're okay." Naruto said. "Let me know if you find out anything else."

The toad nodded and disappeared in another puff of smoke, leaving the Naruto and Sakura staring at where Pakkun had just been.

"I don't understand," Naruto said blankly. The appearance of one of Kakashi's ninken had been so sudden and so unexpected that for a single, heart-stopping second he had almost believed that everything he had seen was nothing more than a bad dream – that the body next to him was only a fake, and the real Kakashi would appear at any moment, alive and well...

He pulled himself out of his swirling thoughts. "How did I summon Pakkun?"

"I think it's possible, in special cases, to summon from someone else's contract if you have their blood," Sakura said slowly. "But how…?"

Naruto looked at his right hand, still smeared with the blood used for summoning, then turned abruptly back to Kakashi's body. He gently lifted the hand he had been holding earlier, his own hands shaking as dread crept over him, and rolled up Kakashi's sleeve to inspect his arm.

"Sakura-chan," he began slowly. "Is there supposed to be a syringe mark here?"

She drew nearer, and paled when she saw what his finger was pointing at – a tiny puncture mark and a smudge of blood, on the inside of Kakashi's wrist.

He guessed the truth from her expression before she said anything.

"Someone was here before us," Naruto said, and his voice was as cold as the ice creeping into his veins. "Someone who shouldn't have been."

His eyes flashed scarlet.

"And that person has taken some of Kakashi-sensei's blood."

* * *

 _If I die and my body falls into the hands of another village, they can..._

* * *

 **will**

 _modal verb_

2\. Expressing inevitable events.

\- Oxford English Dictionary

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 **The plot thickens... Chapter 3 may take a while, since I'm also working on _Mieru_ and a lot of uni stuff. Here's a hint at what Chapter 3 will most likely deal with:  
**

 **will**

 _noun_

2\. A legal document containing instructions as to what should be done with one's money and property after one's death.

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 **Quick poll: how many of you would be interested if I made a Twitter and/or Tumblr account specifically for updates on fic progress (and sometimes sneak previews of my drafts)? You can append your preferences (would you be interested, would you prefer Twitter or Tumblr or some other platform) to your review if you'd like to leave one. :)**


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